Alton Glenn Miller - When Music Meant Melody, Verse, Composition, Lyrics, Arrangement, Acoustical and Wind Instruments and most of all: TALENT!

His music always seemed to be playing, as a great interlude, during the holidays. He died before I was born, but his music is eternal. m/r

Remembering Glenn Miller | National Review Online

By Spencer Case  12-15-14

Big-band giant, down-to-earth guy, devoted patriot — and he might have some new albums on the way.

On the stormy day of December 15, 1944, a military plane transporting big-band superstar Major Glenn Miller to Paris for a Christmas broadcast disappeared over the English Channel. It’s worth taking a moment, on the 70th anniversary of that event, to consider whom America lost.

What Miller accomplished in his 40-year lifetime is astonishing. During the 1930s, Miller was among a handful of innovators, along with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, who brought the big-band era to its artistic peak. He also modernized military music during World War II. By the 1940s, John Philip Sousa’s marches sounded stale to many. Miller infused jazz elements into his wartime compositions such as “St. Louis Blues March.” This added a bit of zip without flouting too many conventions.

“A band ought to have a sound all of its own,” Miller said. “It ought to have a personality.”

The personality of Miller’s band stressed harmony, and the effect of his music was to promote national harmony. The appeal of such tunes as “Moonlight Serenade,” “Tuxedo Junction,” and “In the Mood” transcended not only the racial barrier but also — perhaps more impressively — the generational barrier. 

“I don’t suppose there was a single listener in the United States, unless he was tin-eared and tone-deaf, who didn’t love and appreciate the music of the Miller band,” observed Bing Crosby.

Miller’s accomplishments are all the more dramatic in light of his humble origins.

Alton Glenn Miller was born to Lewis Elmer Miller and Mattie Lou Miller on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Iowa. Glenn (who, like all members of his family, went by his second name) would be the second of four children, all of whom had musical proclivities. Unfortunately, the family patriarch could hold neither a tune nor a job. He even seems to have been a bad janitor. So the Millers were constantly moving, unable to escape poverty. …

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